I looked out of my window tall
And laughed to see the May,
For everything both great and small
Was on a holiday.

Then Love came by and laughed at me,
And I forgot the Spring--
Only I knew the ecstasy
Of madly listening.

And now the branches all again
Are red with vernal May,
But tears have dimmed the window-pane--
And no one comes my way.

Deem not this book a creed, 't is but the cry
Of one who fears not death, yet would not die;
Who at the table feigns with sorry jest.
To love the wine the Master's hand has pressed,
The while he loves the absent Master best,--
The bitter cry of Love for love's reply!

(The Highlands)


Mountains,
Veiled in shifting vapors,
Mountains,
Bleak, foreboding,
Mountains,
Stark and overpowering.
Torrents,
Tumbling, crashing,
Dragging boulders
In their rushing,
Lakes,
Forlorn and lonesome
Heather
In magenta patches,
Sheep, and cattle
Black and somber,
Winding roads
Through massive passes.
Rain,
Sun,
Flowers,
Mist,
Rain,--
Loved Scotland!

(Locheven)


I love to tread a winding path
Through the woods,
And, world weary, pause upon it.
The trees bend and enclose me
In brooding calm;
I feel the presence of Deity.

I hear the cadence of the stillness--
A stillness so alive.
The whisper of the leaves,
The song of the brook over golden stone
The whir of a bird's wings;
And I know the presence of Deity.

Why do you prate to me
Of deeds unjust and just,
Moved by a story of good
Or a monstrous tale of crimes--
Me that can have no loves
But star-eyed queens long dust,
Me that can mourn no griefs
But the tears in poets' rhymes?

A pale wraith stood in the dim grey dawn
Beside his old love's bed
Wavering like a film of lawn
And wrang his hands and said,
"Oh! I have come to make my prayer
For I cannot take my rest
When I think of the red crown I called your hair
And the cold stone in your breast.

"Out of the eyeless hopeless dark
The nights that are black and grey
Never a moon or faint star-spark
Or a lonely glimmer of day.
Oh! my love, I have come, love,
From the ebony gates of death
For the sake of the red crown I called your hair
And the jasmine of your breath."

"Light of my life lie close
Oh! Love, I have found you at last;
Let me hear your low sweet voice
The knell of the aching past.
The lashes lie on your cheek
Oh! lift them and show me your eyes;
Twin stars in a mortal face,
They are soft, they are kind, they are wise."

"Heart of my hungry heart
My hero whose hand is in mine
If we fall let it be to the pit,
For to-day we have touched the divine.
Time has stood still to-day....
This day which has squandered its sun.
It has been all glory and gold
All perfect days in this one."

TWO DAYS
(February 15--September 28, 1894)


To V. G.

That day we brought our Beautiful One to lie
In the green peace within your gates, he came
To give us greeting, boyish and kind and shy,
And, stricken as we were, we blessed his name:
Yet, like the Creature of Light that had been ours,
Soon of the sweet Earth disinherited,
He too must join, even with the Year's old flowers,
The unanswering generations of the Dead.
So stand we friends for you, who stood our friend
Through him that day; for now through him you know

Ask me not how they came,
These songs of love and death,
These dreams of a futile stage,
These thumb-nails seen in the street:
Ask me not how nor why,
But take them for your own,
Dear Wife of twenty years,
Knowing--O, who so well?--
You it was made the man
That made these songs of love,
Death, and the trivial rest:
So that, your love elsewhere,
These songs, or bad or good--
How should they ever have been?

Last night I dreamed of the maid with yellow curls.
She came to me in the room above my shop,
And we two were alone, freed from the laws of day.
I held her then to myself.
I took from her her clothing, garment by garment,
And watched them fall about her feet,
White petals of a flower.
And I drew from her to myself her thoughts, one by one,
As often I had wished, till all of her was mine.

Then I was sad, for nothing was left to love.
And I quickly clothed her again, garment by garment,
And gave her back her thoughts, one by one,
And awoke in joy.